Saturday, May 11 – Tuesday, May 14

We walked the block to the Montgomery capitol that morning right when it opened. But because it was the weekend, they only offered guided tours. The tour didn’t start for another hour so we went into the gift shop to buy a coffee mug and get our 49th stamp! 

One of the security guards, Mr. Moss, noticed our motorcycle keys as we were going through security and started talking to us about riding. He also owns a bike and so we talked with him for awhile and swapped stories. 

Since we had some time to kill before the tour started, we walked to get some breakfast and then back to the hotel to pack everything up so we could leave for home straight from the capitol. 

We had the best tour guide, Mr. Irby.  Mr. Aroine Irby was on the march from Selma to Montgomery back in 1965. He recalled how the governor of Alabama, Mr. Wallace told his men to do whatever it took to get rid of them. He was beaten, shot at, and sprayed with tear gas. 

He said that he later became friends with Governor Wallace after he apologized for his past racism and even worked for him. He has worked for every governor since. When Mr. Wallace passed away, Mr. Irby was a pallbearer at his funeral. 

Mr. Irby now gives tours at the capitol, a place he wasn’t allowed to enter when he was younger. It was a great capitol to end our United States tour on. We learned a lot from Mr. Irby and had fun interacting with the other guests on the tour. 

As we were putting on our gear, Mr. Moss came out to take a look at our bike and swap a few more stories. 

We started the journey back home. An hour or so down the road, we had to stop to put on our rain gear. It rained A L L   D A Y. It was brutal. But we wanted to get home so we kept going. I only took a few pictures throughout the day because of the rain. 

We reminisced on the drive about all the states we had been to, which one was our favorite, our least favorite, the best overall trip, funny moments, times when we wanted to turn around and go home, times I wanted to get a plane ticket and leave RJ to drive home alone, scary moments, and the moment we finally made it to the last continental capitol on our MOTORCYCLE. 

We drove 750 miles that day and made it part way through Texas. We crashed at a hotel and laid our gear out to dry so we could hop back on the bike in the morning. 

 

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Sunday, May 12

I slept in while RJ got a bit of work done. We drove over to a McDonald’s down the street to grab a bite to eat before another long day of driving. RJ did a bit more work while I blogged. Thirty minutes later we were ready to go. RJ cleaned the bike chain and we were off.

This day was the complete opposite of the previous day. There wasn’t a cloud in sight and it was so warm that we opened every vent and took out our jacket liners. 

We had to stop at Whataburger for lunch before we left Texas. As always, so good. 

We drove to Kingman, Arizona for the night – 1,150 miles.

It was pretty late by the time we pulled in to a hotel and we were freezing. It was so cold driving in the high altitude, especially at night, and temperatures were hovering at 30*.  But, we had unintentionally completed another Saddle Sore (1,000 miles in 24 hours) so we were happy about that. We have done a Saddle Sore and/or a Bun Burner (1,500 miles in 36 hours) on every trip so far. 

 

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-Monday, May 13-

We drove the rest of the way home, 750 miles.

…and pulled into the driveway around 1:30am. It was another long day but we made it home safe and sound. 

 

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-Tuesday, May 14-

I spent most of the day with the animals. They missed me so much. I just know they did. 

Sorry, little Emmet overload.

That evening, we drove down to Chico to celebrate our trip with a meal at In-N-Out, our tradition after every big motorcycle trip. Then we went to watch Detective Pikachu in theaters, a movie we had both been waiting to watch till we got back home as a celebratory movie. 

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In February of 2017 we bought a new motorcycle and two months later we started our epic journey of traveling to each state capitol on our motorcycle. We had no idea if we would make it to each state and Dad-in-law jokingly said he would be surprised if we only hit 13 states so of course I had to prove him wrong because I always love a good challenge. 41,000 miles later…eat dirt, Dad! Haha 😝 

Each trip was always a learning experience for both of us and we quickly found out that communication is key on trips like these. I realized that I could survive with three sets of clothes and I didn’t need a fifty pound suitcase. Thirty-five degrees is toasty when you’ve been driving in 20 degrees for some time. Sometimes, a hot bowl of ramen noodles is as good as an expensive steak. Sleeping in a mummy sleeping bag and camping for four weeks straight really makes you appreciate your bed back at home. And it’s really nice when you don’t have a motorcycle license and are too short to touch the ground so your husband has to do all the driving. But the best part is having a best friend to travel with all over the United States and also to tell you it’s going to be ok when you start crying because he accidentally drank all the ramen noodle broth when you were really looking forward to having some because you were literally starving. (Yes, that really did happen on one of our trips! That, folks, is why communication is important.)

We have Hawaii to visit yet. I’m not sure when we will visit but in the meantime, I still want to post blogs about daily life. Thanks for reading the blogs I did manage to post about some of the states we visited. I’ll be back in a day or two to catch you up on life since our last motorcycle trip. 

~em

P.S. Does anyone want to come over for coffee? I now have an unreasonable amount of coffee mugs…